While the rest of the world stands at attention, Hawaii floats
nonchalantly at ease, a routine maneuver for a flotilla of islands that
just happen to be moored at the most congential spot on the globe. So
suitable is Hawaii for human habitation that Honolulu residents start
shouting "cold spell" if the temperature slips down to 68
degrees. Yet the special ambiance of Hawaii is more than a matter of
degrees; it's a pleasing amalgam of sun, ocean, trade winds and
stars, all brought together here ages ago by a group of highly active
volcanoes.

Some of these volcanoes, such as Kilauea at Hawaii's Volcano
National Park on the big island, are still earthshakers. Kilauea boiled
over 32 times last year. But most of them are long defunct and stand in
varying stages of disrepair, as if waiting around to see how their
handiwork will turn out.

Only a native can identify some of the old craters, such as the one
at Hanauma Bay on Oahu that has been overrun and flooded by the ocean.
The result is a gigantic, circular swimming pool, popular among fish
because the government protects them there, and also a favorite of
tourists, judging from the ranks of tour buses parked daily along its
rim.

Another crater barely visible to most people is Puowaina, nicknamed
the Punchbowl, where ancient Hawaiians practiced human sacrifice. Iths
almost in the center of Honolulu and now serves as a cemetery. Ernie
Pyle, the World War II correspondnet, is buried there.

But by far the most recognizable volcanic cone on Hawaii is Diamond
HEad, the only one whose name has become a househould word. It's
parked right at the end of Waikiki Beach, two miles from downtown
Honolulu. Diamond Head has long since retired from island-making, but
it still plays a role in making Waikiki the most picturesque beach in
the world. Some people have taken exception to its hulking presence,
and a movement was afoot to clothe it in a tunic of brightly colored
bougainvillaea, but nothing has happened so far, and the volcano remains
mostly bare.

So many tidal waves of change have spilled over Waikiki in recent
decades that the people at one of the most venerable hotels there
completely lost sight of Diamond Head for years, only to rediscover it
by chance last during renovation. It happened when a chain of luxury
hotels bought the Halejulani, the only hotel at Waikiki that's
found a niche in literary history. It was here over drinks in the early
1920s that The Saturday evening Post writer Earl Derr Biggers met a
Honolulu police inspector on whom he based his famous character, Charlie
Chan.

The new owners set about transforming the old Halekulani, a
collection of low cottages, into the most elegant luxury hotel in
Hawaii.

"We are trying to recreate the atmoshpere of the old open-air
dining room as it was in the 1930s," said the Halekulani's new
manager Andrew Thomson," and we thought that was the view," he
said, pointing out front to the bright blue sweep of the Pacific.
"Then we tore out a section fo the wall and discovered what the
original builders meant it to be"--a tastefully framed portrait of
distant Diamond Head.

Biggers once described this view in "The House Without a
Key," a Charlie Chan mystery that was set at the olk Halekulani.
"The shadows cast by the tall coconut palms lengthened and
deepened;" he wrote, "the light of the fallin sun flamed on
Diamond Head and tinted with the gold the rollers sweeping in from the
coral reef. A few late swimmers, reluctant to depart, dotted those
waters whose touch is like the caress of a lover." That was 60
years ago, and Biggers is no longer there, but the tall palms are there,
as well as the sweeping rollers and the lingering swimmers. The
description might have been written only yesterday.

Although the evening is serene and romantic here, the daytime is
another story. Sixty thousand people or more take to the beach to make
burnt offerings of themselves under the tropical sun. That's as
many as the entire resident population of neighboring Maui, 40 minutes
away by plane.

Maui is much less crowded than Oahu, but it's got a bigger
volcano, a great dollop of a cone 10,026 feet high with a crater 20
miles around (the largest in the world). It's called Haleakala,
and like a huge traffic cop, it even controls the island's weather
by stopping clouds on the windward side, where they dump some 400 inches
of rain a year.

"The remarkable thing about this place," one resident
told me, pointing at the azure Pacific and then flicking his thumb in
the direction of Haleakala, "is, within two hours you can go from
scuba diving on a beautiful coral reef to walking on the moon."
Apollo astronauts once hopped around like kangaroos on the lunar
landscape of Haleakala. And the cone is still home to a handful of
scientists who man the airy monastic retreat of Puu Ulaula Observatory,
perched (above the clouds) on a barren cinder peak. While they busily
track satellites in space, other visitors to this second largest of
Hawaii's islands pursue more earthbound activities.

The latest pastime that's caught their fancy is Cruiser
Bob's Haleakala Downhill, an absorbing and, Bob contends,
"safe" plunge by bicycle down 38 miles of the crookedest,
steepest road in the world from the crater's rim toward the sea.
Bob guarantees that his clients won't have to peddle more than half
a mile. He charges $70 for the all-day affair and includes rental of a
bike equipped with "superbrakes" and a van ride to the top.
If you can manage to get to the top on your own, the cost will be less.

Cruiser Bob's van leaves daily from Lahaina, Maui's old
whaling town and a former royal capital on the southwest coast. Once a
haven for drunken sailors, Lahaina is now populated by pirates disguised
as shopkeepers who will gladly sell you all manner of goods at twice the
rpice you'd pay back home.

Although low-lying areas of Maui have been sectioned off into
resorts such as the manicured 1,000 acres of Kapalua, or squeezed into
ranks by Dole and Delmonte, the cooler highlands, rather grandiosely
referred to as "the upcountry," have been given over to
sprawling ranches that produce cattle, sheep, foodstuffs and flowers for
the surrounding islands. One resident of the volcano even dabbles in
wines: Emil Tedeschi, a soft-spoken immigrant from the Napa Valley of
California, for years has been doing his best to improve Hawaiian
spirits. Tedeschi now runs Hawaii's only winery, situated high on
the 18,000-acre Ulupalakua Ranch.

visitors able to tear themselves away from oceanside pursuits are
welcome to stop by his winery, situated at about 2,000 feet, and engage
in a high-level pinic under a huge camphor tree. The required beverage,
of course, is one of Tedeschi's wines.

From the heights of Haleakala, the far-off Lahaina coast appears to
be 100 miles away. Its flock of luxury hotels at Kaanapali Beach (a
kind of struggling understudy to Oahu's Waikiki) is only a speck on
the Maui landscape, and residents would like to keep things that way.

Just down the way from Kaanapali beach, the Kapalua resort flaunts
its own private Garden of Eden, a paradise within a paradise, designed
to tempt the credit cards right out of the pockets of an affluent
clientele.

Never mind that the first Adam and eve stayed in paradise for free:
the "ultradeluxe" package for six days and five nights, all
inclusive, costs $10,000--a couple, a sizable bite out of the apple. Of
course, one can get by here much more cheaply. Scuba and snorkling
lessons are free, and so is the view: coconut groves, birght ambuscades
of tropical flowers and a lawn as smooth and green as a fresh roll of
Astroturf stretching all the way down to the beach. But the view
doesn't end there; it picks up nine miles out on the horizon with
the faint and serene presence of the island of Molokai.

The best way to tour Maui or Molokai is by helicopter. The copters
lift off from a pad atop Pineapple Hill near the Kapalua Hotel. Each
one is fully produced, directed and orchestrated (through stereo
headphones) by the pilot. Ours climbed to 10,000 feet past the west
Maui mountains to the top of Haleakala; then buzzed down into the
crater, disturbing the daydreams of scientists at Puu Ulaula. After
warning passengers to start swallowing hard, our pilot dived through the
thick bankd of clouds on the windward side into another world of
tropical rainforest, deep gorges, hidden pools and towering waterfalls.
He flew low over the isolated homes of George Harrison and Jim Nabors
and then, as if on a whim to fulfill some tropical-island fantasy,
dropped toward a tiny postage stamp far below tht turned out to be a
beach--one so remote and isolated by sharp coral reefs, it can't be
reached safely by boat.

The passengers stepped out for a few minutes to explore the area
completely carpeted by gray volcanic rocks. Pocked and pitted, yet worn
satin-smooth by a thousand decades in the Maui surf, they looked like
tiny island replicas churned out by Haleakala. Before we took off again
to return to the world of people, I slipped one into my pocket as a
souvenir of the exquisite volcanic reality of Hawaii.

COPYRIGHT 1984 Saturday Evening Post Society
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